Apple earlier this week announced ResearchKit, an open source framework that will let medical and health researchers gather data through iPhone apps. ResearchKit will be released in April. Apps to monitor asthma patients and for studies on breast cancer survivors, cardiovascular health and Parkinson's Disease, already have been developed using ResearchKit. The demand for remote patient-monitoring is skyrocketing. Twenty-six billion people worldwide will use health-related apps by 2017, according to Sagentia.

A long-known flaw in Safari's implementation of private browsing that saves the address of each and every website users visit to a file on their local drive, even after closing private browsing windows and quitting Safari, is still present in the latest pre-release versions of OS X Yosemite.

Early this year, we posted the first screenshots and details of an early version of the Apple Watch Companion application for the iPhone. Now that the application is bundled into iOS 8.2, developer Hamza Sood has activated the Apple Watch Settings portion and has shared a view of screenshots. As can be seen in the full gallery below, the interface is dark black, like the...

When the Apple Watch goes on display next month ahead of its launch, it won’t just be available to preview in Apple Stores. The company shared on Monday that three cities around the world — namely Paris, Tokyo, and London — will present the Watch outside of Apple’s own retail stores where people can preview and try on the new wearable. Newly captured photos now show early construction at one of those venues, revealing just how big the presentation area will be.

Galeries Lafayette in Paris is one of those select venues as we mentioned last month before Apple’s special event this week, and French blog...

A new report is adding fuel to the rumors of an Apple car with evidence of a mysterious off-site research facility.

Citing unnamed sources, AppleInsider claims that the “Apple Car” is not just a concept, but a full-blown project that Apple is developing in secret away from its main campus. Most intriguingly, AppleInsider says it may have discovered the Sunnyvale, Calif., site where this research is reportedly taking place.

Here’s AppleInsider’s case in a nutshell:

Apple occupies several buildings in a large office complex in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Product designer Greg Koenig watched Apple's Watch Craftsmanship videos and used his knowledge to provide a detailed step-by-step narrration of how Apple is crafting the gold, stainless steel, and aluminum Watch models.

Our take on the news:

Koenig's analysis is a detailed and fascinating look at the precision manufacturing that underlies Apple's products. The take home message is that Apple has the money and manufacturing expertise to create products that cannot be duplicated by competing companies.

Hidden within the newly released iOS 8.2 update for iPhone, the official "Activity" iPhone app for the Apple Watch has been discovered, with new screenshots showcasing how the software will look when a Watch is paired.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the airwaves this week with a surprise call into CNBC's Mad Money show. In its 10th year and hosted by Jim Cramer, the show invites callers to talk about stocks. Cook's conversation with Cramer lasted 7-minutes and covered a variety of topics, including Apple Pay, ResearchKit and more. You can watch the segment in the video embedded below.

Our take on the news:

Tim Cook is a down-to-earth CEO, who enjoys talking about Apple. He doesn't shun public forums and is often spotted talking to customers and staff at the Apple Stores that he visits.

It’s sort of like having someone new in your life, except it’s a digital standard that Apple is applying for power, video, communications and almost everything else under the sun.

Which is pretty interesting, the raw facts stating that USB-C can apparently support 100W of power + HDMI 1080p + USB 3.x data rates at the same time. Even so, Apple is now offering its USB-C Digital AV Multipart Adapter, a US$79.00 device that offers a power, HDMI and USB bridge in one device.

What better day than Friday the 13th to check that your backups are actually working by restoring some critical files?

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

It’s the operating system betas that predict the way the wind if blowing.

Apple on Thursday issued a number of new beta releases for developers, including an OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite beta with Force Touch trackpad support for third-party apps, as well as new betas of iOS 8.3, Xcode and OS X Server.

The pre-release version of OS X 10.10.3 is identified as build “14D98g.” In the release notes, Apple informs developers that it contains application programming interfaces intended to support the Force Touch capabilities of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The capabilities of the Force Touch APIs, according to Apple, include:

Everyone loves a good mystery, and the team of Neil Hughes, Mikey Campbell and Sam Oliver at AppleInsider appears to have stumbled an amazing one. The crew has an exclusive look at automotive research that's being performed at a facility "hidden in plain sight" near the Cupertino headquarters of Apple. The project is called "Titan", the goal is to build an electric car, and serious work is being done at a location in Sunnyvale, CA.

The story begins with the rumors last fall that Apple was recruiting engineers from electric auto powerhouse Tesla for their own "Titan" project. That veracity of that information has been proven through other sources and public stories in such publications as The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

I’ve learned over the years that there’s no such thing as an Apple accessory that’s perfect for every user. A design optimized for budget-conscious users will often turn off people who are ready to spend more for something fancier, and vice-versa. The best a company can do is to design, execute, and price products well for a particular segment of the population. Anker specializes in this — it focuses on creating very good to great accessories for value-focused users.

On Wednesday, Google released its 2015 Chromebook Pixel notebook. The new unit incorporates USB Type C, which allows charging as well as high-speed data and display over the same connector and cable. The new Chromebook Pixel incorporates a high-resolution touchscreen, a sleek aluminum body, and smooth glass trackpad as well as a new wide-angle camera lens.

Also featured is 8GB RAM and a 32GB SSD. There’s also an LS (“Ludicrous Speed”) version that’s even faster, both variants claiming 12 hours of battery life and a charging technology that allows for to two hours of battery life with just 15...

A report from AppleInsider claims Apple is using a shell company called SixtyEight Research and small office building in Sunnyvale, California to work on its secretive electric vehicle project. The report doesn’t definitively confirm that Apple is actually using the site for its car project, but it does discover some connections with Apple and points to recent automotive related renovations at the building:

The results of this extensive investigation led to Sunnyvale, Calif., and the home of a mysterious market research firm dubbed SixtyEight. Nestled amongst a number of verifiable Apple-...

UK safety tests have shown that using a smartwatch while driving is more dangerous than using a smartphone, reports the Huffington Post.

The Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in Wokingham, Berks showed that a driver reading a message on an Apple Watch would take 2.52 seconds to react to an emergency manoeuvre, whereas a driver talking to another passenger would react in 0.9 seconds. Reading on an Apple Watch was even found to be more distracting than using a handheld mobile (1.85 second delay).

While the piece refers to the Apple Watch, the TRL told me that the tests were conducted with an unspecified smartwatch, and was not a full-scale study, but earlier studies have shown that even talking with someone handsfree is more distracting that holding a conversation with someone in the car....

Shrouded in secrecy and speculation, Apple's mysterious "Titan" electric car project is believed to be in development at a top-secret facility hidden in plain sight, discovered by AppleInsider just minutes away from the company's California headquarters.

Microsoft is planning on making the next generation of its Siri competitor, Cortana, available on iOS and Android devices sometime after the fall, reports Reuters. The focus, says the company, will be on an intelligent assistant that predicts the help you need, rather than simply responding to user requests.

Cortana could tell a mobile phone user when to leave for the airport, days after it read an email and realized the user was planning a flight. It would automatically check flight status, determine where the phone is located using GPS, and checking traffic conditions.

Google has majored on this kind of proactive approach through its Google...

Microsoft is preparing to release an advanced version of its Cortana digital assistant on iOS and Android in the future, reports Reuters. The software is being developed as part of the company's artificial intelligence project, codenamed Einstein.

"This kind of technology, which can read and understand email, will play a central role in the next roll out of Cortana, which we are working on now for the fall time frame," said Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and a part of the Einstein project, in an interview at the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

Our take on the news:

Microsoft has been focused on mobile under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, expanding its presence on iOS with Office for iPhone and iPad. Bringing Cortana to iOS is the next logical step, even it means Windows Phone loses the...

Microsoft is planning to bring Cortana, the voice assistant on Windows phones, to iOS and Android devices sometime after the technology arrives on desktop PCs this fall in Windows 10, according to a new report.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport says that anonymously tracking smartphones through airport security has enabled it to cut the average waiting time by a third.

The system, developed by Danish company Blip Systems, scans both WiFi and Bluetooth connections to look for MAC addresses of mobile devices passing through security. Counting the number of devices in each queue enables the system to estimate the length of the queue. The queue length is displayed to passengers in minutes, so they can choose which queue to join, and also used to help the airport allocate the right number of security personnel.

Blip says that it anonymizes this data, and only uses device counts. You might think iOS 8 users don’t have to take the company’s word for it since Apple introduced ...

Developer Hamza Sood has done some digging inside the public iOS 8.2 build that was distributed to users on Monday. Although the Apple Watch is included by default as stock app (undeletable, whether you like it or not), the OS also includes an Activity app. Although it was...

Liveblogs are usually quite popular and this was no exception. Our traffic on Monday was quite nice, something we'd like to see every day. But as we noticed while watching the event, there was another liveblog that was competing with ours -- Apple's.

Apple has begun posting real-time commentary and photos to Apple.com during (although not as fun as ours and presumably pre-written) during press event livestreams. As a result, if you missed something said by one of the presenters or had issues hearing Jony Ive during one of his many video narrations, chances were good that you were going to get the facts in a short blurb from the Apple liveblog.

Movie star Anna Kendrick managed to say something in a single tweet that instantly nails anyone who would buy a gold Apple Watch Edition: "We should be thanking Apple for launching the $10,000 'apple watch' as the new gold standard in douchebag detection." Right on. Still, people who believe that a gold Apple Watch is an important status symbol aren't the real problem here. The shallow stupidity that forms the core of people who live with thoughtless privilege isn't what disappoints me with the Apple Watch Edition. It's Apple.

Last time, I talked about the “dark matter” of your iOS devices and OS X systems: stuff that seems to occupy space without offering up information about why. In this Mac 911, I’ll answer more questions about storage and backup.

As many as grains of sand on the beach

Doug Eldred writes in with a concern about a form of file bloat—but not about bloated sizes. Rather, the sheer number of items that seem to appear on his drive.

Whatever or wherever they are, they must not be terribly large, but my Mac used to have less than a million files (according to various tools, including SuperDuper!), and now it’s [up] to 1.3 million. Trust me, I haven’t knowingly created 300K new file recently!

Apple devoted a segment of its recent “Spring Forward” event to the introduction of ResearchKit, a software framework for collecting medical research data within iOS. Like many 1.0 products, it has both great promise and some growing up to do.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

This week's all-new AppleInsider podcast is now available to download and subscribe in iTunes or SoundCloud, with detailed analysis of this week's news, including a full discussion of Apple's entire 'Spring Forward' event, HBO Now and Apple TV, ResearchKit for iOS, newly redesigned MacBook and Apple Watch.

Thursday March 12

This walkthrough is a detailed narration of what we see in Apple’s Watch Craftsmanship videos. Of course, we only get to see a mere fraction of the process; I’ve tried to provide plausible explanations for the likely steps taking place between the processes shown on film, but these are assumptions and are included only to provide a more satisfying and complete narration.

Firaxis has released Mac and iPad versions of Sid Meier's Starships, an anticipated turn-based strategy game, while 6 Wunderkinder has updated the Mac and iOS editions of its popular to-do list app, Wunderlist, with folders and a revised design.

Here are some of the best free apps, app updates and new apps that have landed in the App Store recently. Today's notable apps include a discount on Essential Anatomy 5, the new Ulysses for iPad, and an update to Horizon photo and video app. All app prices are USD and subject to change. Some deals may expire quickly, so grab them while you can.

iOS Apps Now Free

Barnyard Mahjong [Now free, down from $0.99] Barnyard Mahjong is a completely new and unique way to experience the solitaire game. With a down on the farm theme and lots of fun animal sounds you will find hours of fun as you eliminate all the tiles from the board.

Mahjong Deluxe [Now free, down from $0.99] Mahjong Deluxe is a solitaire game based on the classic Chinese game where you are challenged to eliminate...

It's time to save some of your hard-earned money with our Daily Deals, featuring exclusive deals for AWT readers, hardware discounts and our own handpicked iOS and OS X sales. All prices are USD and subject to change. Please check prices before you purchase as some deals may expire quickly.

AWT's Daily Deals

MacPhun Focus [Now free, down from $9.99] To celebrate the launch of AppleWorld.Today, photo software developer Macphun is offering their popular Focus app for Mac for FREE readers of AWT.

This nifty photo software allows anyone to do a couple of super-cool things: (a) direct attention to the most interesting part of your photo and (b) use tilt-shift and motion blur effects towards...

The forthcoming book "Becoming Steve Jobs" is shaping up to be a revelation on the late Apple cofounder's life, and a recent "leak" reveals Jobs refused a living donor liver transplant from current CEO Tim Cook, was looking into an acquisition of Yahoo! and didn't want Apple to produce another TV product.

In a **totally unscripted surprise** call to celebrate Mad Money stock analyst Jim Cramer’s 10th year on the air, Apple CEO Tim Cook let loose a slew of compliments to the analyst who has had a controversialpast with AAPL stock trading.

One example is a story about an offer then-COO Tim Cook made to Jobs when the latter was battling cancer. Cook says that he discovered he shared a blood type with Jobs and decided to undergo numerous...

I decided to take a look on Amazon for Apple Watch and see what they had. I was shocked with all of the watches that were listed on the site. Although there were no Apple Watches, there are a few copies.

Apple has made small but important changes to its official App Store Review Guidelines for iOS developers, addressing consent issues with the company's new ResearchKit platform, along with recurring payments under Apple Pay, and downloads of third-party music and video.

If you can’t wait to get your fingers on the Force Touch trackpad in the new MacBook announced Monday, get thee to an Apple Store. The new trackpad—which simulates clicks by vibrating a taptic engine, even though the trackpad itself isn’t hinged and doesn’t move—makes an appearance in the newly refreshed 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro as well.

iFixit tore down a new Retina MacBook Pro and discovered some secrets Apple didn’t reveal at Monday’s special event. For starters, the trackpad has its own chips, including an ST Microelecronics 32F103 ARM Cortex-M based microcontroller and a Broadcom BCM5976 touch digitizer (also found in the...

The United States' Central Intelligence Agency for years has been working to break iOS security, according to a report published Tuesday. The allegations are based on documents provided by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden. Researchers working with the CIA have presented their tactics and achievements at Trusted Computing Base Jamborees, secret annual gatherings that have been going on for nearly a decade. They have been using both physical and noninvasive techniques to penetrate Apple's encrypted firmware.

Will the Apple Watch be the next must-have technology gadget or a complete flop? Is it reasonably priced or expensive beyond any rational calculation? Will it be the sort of device that can be upgraded over time or will it join your old iPod in a drawer in a few years? No one knows the answers to these questions, but Adam Engst suggests that how you answer them says more about you than the Apple Watch itself.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

After the kids are done you can send it all over the place or print it out. There is a nice video capture feature as well that replays the drawing which looks like it will pump up your kids for the next drawing.

The OSMO game system has three other games at present: Words, Newton and Tangram

iOS 8.2 dropped on Monday—you might have noticed an undeleteable Apple Watch app installed on your iPhone 5 or later—but as a wise Milwaukee native once sang, “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.” So true, and so do software updates. And if you are bold, brave person who’s cool with betas, the future of iOS is now.

Thursday, Apple announced a public beta program for iOS. Once you sign up at the Apple Seed website, you can get immediate access to the OS X Yosemite Public Beta program (the current seed of OS X 10.10.3 gives you early access to Photos, for example). A link to join the iOS beta may appear.

Apple is beginning to open up its first-ever public beta program for iOS. Like the OS X beta program that launched last year, the program should offer pre-release access for minor and major upgrades to the operating system—it will begin with iOS 8.3 and will presumably move on to later versions as they become available.

Not all users are apparently able to access the iOS-related parts of the beta site just yet (we haven't been able to), but 9to5Mac has a good rundown of the sign-up and installation process. Once you've signed up with your Apple ID, you have to install a profile from appleseed....

Apple’s 2015 MacBook and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro are both equipped with a new Force Touch trackpad that adds new features within certain apps on OS X. If you’re not familiar with Apple’s new Force Touch trackpad, it’s completely pressure sensitive and can detect a hard press from a soft press. With this, you now have the ability to Force Click (a click with a continued press) on specific items to perform different actions.

We’ve spent the last 24 hours searching through OS X on Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display to find all of the hidden Force Click features that Apple has yet to mention. There are a good amount of uses for Force Click, but these 15 happen to be our favorite…

If you’d like to find out more about the functionality or technology...

Some 60 Linux kernel developers last week adopted a small "patch," called the "Code of Conflict," that attempts to set guidelines for discourse in the kernel community and outlines a path for mediation if someone feels abused or threatened. Linux creator Linus Torvalds posted the appeal for good behavior on his personal git.kernel.org page. Torvalds' call for improved internal developer relations could be little more than wishful thinking, considering his own reputation for fueling heated community exchanges with brash comments.

Apple has added some new entries to its App Store Review Guidelines that developers must follow when developing and submitting apps for iOS devices. Among the new additions, Apple is requiring developers to obtain consent from users for health-related human subject research, obtain explicit authorization for downloading music and video from third-party sources, and disclose policies related to Apple Pay…

For the new health research guidelines, Apple is likely preparing for the roll out of its just unveiled ResearchKit platform as well as deeper integration of health and...

Apple has updated its Apple Seed website to include many references to iOS device management. It has also updated the name of its program to ‘Apple Beta Software Program’, dropping the specificity of it being for OS X only.

Apple is now offering iOS 8.3 as a public beta. Interested customers can sign up to be part of the program on this website. After signing up, you can enroll into the iOS public beta program. (Note: The program is still rolling out. A link to join the iOS program may not appear immediately upon registration).

9to5Mac reported that this was in the works a few weeks ago, with a launch due for mid-March. In addition, we exclusively revealed that Apple is gearing up to offer the same public beta...

I feel old saying this, but having used computers since before external hard drives existed, I can say with certainty that buying a hard drive is easier today than it’s ever been before. For traditional drives, prices are low, options are numerous, and capacities are so high that your only choices are “enough space,” “more than enough space,” and “way more than enough space.” I could point you towards a gigantic 5-Terabyte $139 Seagate USB 3.0 hard drive right now and end this article without another paragraph. Since Apple doesn’t even sell a Mac with that much disk space, you could back up five (or more) computers to that drive without running out of room. Or you could store a decade worth of digital photos alongside a giant media library. For $139!

USB-C has become the biggest topic of conversation following Apple’s introduction of the new 12-inch MacBook. After years of separate power, data, and video ports, Apple is now pushing USB-C as a replacement for its own proprietary MagSafe charging solution, as well as other I/O ports included on its previous laptops. Going forward, MacBook users can connect a USB-C multiport adapter to handle whatever accessories they want— USB-C can even support 4k displays using a DisplayPort Alt Mode.

But what accessories will the new MacBook support? Over the last few days, we’ve talked with sources close to the situation to find out what Apple plans on supporting, and whether there will be any limitations for USB-C accessories. The short and amazing answer is that most accessories supporting the USB Type-C specifications should work with your new MacBook. Apple won’t be...

The Intercept’s piece was mostly a condemnation of government tactics, but failed to address what matters to Apple’s customers — whether Apple’s products remain secure and safe to use. Overall, the information is quite optimistic, but the article highlights the complexities of modern security, privacy, and intelligence gathering. We are still in the early days of what is likely to be a generational issue as society continues to adjust to the digital age.

As always, Mogull has a well thought out, well written, and well reasoned piece with none of the hysteria you see in other articles about this subject.

Apple on Thursday issued a number of new beta releases for developers, including an OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite beta with Force Touch trackpad support for third-party apps, as well as new betas of iOS 8.3, Xcode and OS X Server.

FREAK is last week’s worry, but installing untrusted applications is a perennial worry. It’s a two-fer (or two-fear) in this column, about security issues new and old.

Super FREAKy

Apple released updates this week for a security vulnerability known as FREAK. FREAK allowed a malicious party to force a weaker encryption protocol to be used between about one-third of web servers with security credentials and many secure web clients and commonly used software libraries. That weaker protocol could be cracked cheaply and relatively quickly to reveal the contents of a session between a browser and web server. (You can read the full details about the attack in Jeremy Kirk’s news report.)

A few weeks following the previous beta, Apple has released build 1498g of the upcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 release. The next Mac software update includes support for the new iCloud-based Photos app, improved Gmail login, and new, more diverse emojis. To support the new Force Touch trackpad in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display and the new 12-inch MacBook, this new build also adds APIs:

This beta of OS X 10.10.3 contains new developer APIs that work with the Force Touch trackpad in the new MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) to allow a new level of interactivity and control within your apps.

Force click. Apps can have any button, control, or region on the screen respond to a press of stronger pressure. This Force click can...

Previous betas of iOS 8.3 have shown that the release will include new features like wireless CarPlay, more diverse Emojis, a new Emoji keyboard for input, tweaked login for Google services as well as support for Apple Pay in China. You can find details of these changes in our previous coverage.

If the new Retina MacBook's port situation makes you upset, never fear—Apple released new MacBook Airs and a new Retina MacBook Pro on Monday, too. We've got these laptops in for review now, but in the meantime, looking at iFixit's teardowns of both machines is a good way to learn more about them.

Neither laptop has been redesigned, but the Retina MacBook Pro picks up the new Force Touch trackpad that Apple created for the Retina MacBook. The new trackpad doesn't actually "click" the way that the trackpads in the Airs and older Pros do; to save space in the new MacBook design, Apple created a trackpad that doesn't physically move. According to iFixit, the trackpad combines four "springy mounts" with Apple's "taptic engine." These components create...

And it apparently cost Apple about US$25 million in lost sales revenue.

Over the course of a 12-hour outage between Tuesday and Wednesday, Apple’s iTunes Store and App Store were down due to a DNS error. During this time, users couldn’t purchase apps, songs, movies or books. It took Apple 12 hours to get their systems up and running again, costing the company about US$25 million in lost sales.

Apple customers weren’t able to connect to the iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, iBookstore, or iCloud for about half of Wednesday thanks to the internal problem. Apple commented on...

While many in the media are enamored with Apple's latest thin-and-light notebook, competing PC makers haven't been so kind, taking to Twitter to ridicule Apple's offering for not being the slimmest, cheapest, or highest-resolution on the market.

If you are like us, probably the toughest decision you are facing this year is figuring out which new Retina MacBook color you will be getting. The buying process otherwise is more like buying an iPad than a Mac with only 2 speed/storage models.

Will you match your Space Gray iPad and iPhone and now Apple Watch? Or, will you sport the same silver of the Macs that actually do some real work? Will you go off the grid and show your lawyer/banker colleagues who is boss with the gold model?

It is a tough and important call because you WILL be judged – you can’t just embarrassingly hide a MacBook in a wallet case like my Gold iPhone. You’ve had a few days to mull it over. So what’s it going to be?

During Monday's Apple event, the company announced ResearchKit, an open-source framework for developers to use in creating medical research apps. Tuesday morning, Stanford University researchers found out that over 11,000 people had signed up for a cardiovascular study that is one of the first public uses of the tool.

Interviewed by Bloomberg, medical director of Stanford University Cardiovascular Health Alan Yeung noted that "To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country. That's the power of the phone."

That's not the only success story - a team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai had ore than 2,500 people enroll and consent to participate in an asthma study, and the Michael J....

Sources have stated that Apple will reportedly turn to Intel’s new XMM 7360 LTE modem when it launches a special next-generation iPhone model in 2016, suggesting the company is looking to diversify baseband chip suppliers.

Intel’s fast wireless modem, which debuted earlier this month at Mobile World Congress, will be used in an upcoming iPhone variant targeted for release in emerging markets like Asia and Latin America.

The report claims Apple engineers have been traveling “for months” to Intel’s LTE chip research and development offices in Munich, Germany to work on the project. Intel acquired...

If you were curious as to the components of the recently upgraded 13-inch MacBook, iFixit’s got your answers.

On Monday, Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Pro received an update alongside a refreshed MacBook Air lineup and with it gets the new Force Touch trackpad that Apple debuted on its brand new 12-inch MacBook this week. The trackpad doesn’t actually push in like previous generations, but it provides enough haptic feedback to provide a similar and reportedly improved experience. Here’s what was discovered in the teardown:

The new “Taptic Engine” is powered by an array of electromagnets that rapidly push and pull against a metal rail...

In the run up to the Spring Forward event, many people were expecting to see a lengthy exposition of the Apple Watch, to clarify confusion and offer a clean explanation as to how this product plays an essential role in people’s lives. What transpired was not that, at all. Apple’s event was a grab-bag procession of various product announcements, from Mac to Apple TV, concluding with a review of Watch features alongside pricing and availability details.

It did not help consolidate the vision for the Watch. Apple’s messaging for this product is almost the same as it was back in September. The company has not succinctly provided a reason for the Watch’s existence.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have one. I think the Watch is a great product with a good sales trajectory ahead of it, especially the $349 Sport models. The marketing aspects are lacking, so far. The Watch does not have clearly...

New MacBooks from Apple this week have triggered aggressive price drops on the mid-2014 models they replace. Meanwhile, readers have an opportunity to win a free MacBook Air and take advantage of a pair of exclusive offers on both 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros, many of which include free portable optical drives and Audio-Technica ATH-M50x Pro headphones.

The iPad's share of the international tablet market will likely shrink again in 2015, falling from 27.6 percent to 25.6 percent year-over-year, according to a five-year forecast issued on Thursday by research firm IDC.

If I were Tim Cook right now, I wouldn’t be worrying about Apple Watch sales potential. Oh, it will sell. The new TV spot is inspiring, and the stainless steel polish on these watches looks fan-frigging-amazing. Add in Apple’s trademark surprise-and-delight, and all signs point to long lines on launch day.

No, if I were Tim Cook, I’d be more concerned about people using the Watch than buying the Watch. This thing is packed silly with features, and far too many of them have been borrowed from the catalog of smartwatch failures.

Does a smartwatch really need a full suite of fitness features? Certainly not if they just add to the noise.

Stanford University researchers were stunned when they awoke Tuesday to find that 11,000 people had signed up for a cardiovascular study using Apple Inc.’s ResearchKit, less than 24 hours after the iPhone tool was introduced.

“To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year and 50 medical centers around the country,” said Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health. “That’s the power of the phone.”

As the article points out, there are some concerns regarding the people who would get involved but, overall, the research community seems very excited about the present and future possibilities.

The new "Force Touch" trackpad Apple introduced for its notebooks earlier this week has begun to arrive in consumers' hands in the refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro, and a teardown of that device shows off the trackpad's construction while shedding light on storage technology shared between the company's computers.

I’ve tested a number of Eyefi’s Wi-Fi SD cards in my DSLRs over the years, and the product — in terms of hardware, software, and services - just keeps getting better. Today I’m highlighting Eyefi’s new mobiPRO Wi-Fi SD card (US$99.99, on sale through March 15 for $59.99), which I find to be the most useful Eyefi card ever.

As with all of the Eyefi products over the years, the focus is on the SD card that serves not only as a standard storage device for the images and videos you shoot with your digital camera, but as a wireless connection to the world as well.

With 32 GB of Class 10 SDHC storage, the mobiPRO can carry a number of high-resolution images in JPEG or RAW formats, as well as any video shot with your digital camera. But it’s what you can do with those images and video, your iPhone, iPad or Mac, and the Eyefi Cloud Service...

Apple’s attempt to revolutionize medical studies appears off to a strong start. Just one day after the company released the first five apps using the new ResearchKit framework, 11,000 iPhone users signed up for one of the studies.

Stanford Researchers were amazed at the response for the MyHeart Counts app that studies heart health by measuring a user’s daily activity, fitness level, and other factors. “To get 10,000 people enrolled in a medical study normally, it would take a year,” Alan Yeung, medical director of Stanford Cardiovascular Health, told Bloomberg Business.

Apple keeps whittling down the number of fitness trackers in its retail stores as it makes way for the Apple Watch.

The latest victims are Jawbone’s Up24 fitness band and Nike’s Fuelband, which have disappeared from Apple Store shelves in several major cities according to Re/code. Apple has also removed a wrist-worn heart rate monitor from Mio, but continues to sell Jawbone’s clip-on Up Move fitness tracker.

The extended outage of Apple's online services on Wednesday appears to have impacted not just its online stores, but also its retail outlets, which suffered problems conducting basic business operations.

When Apple unveiled the new 12-inch MacBook with just a single port (plus a headphone socket), it was doing not just one radical thing, but a few. Reducing a machine to just one port was the first; dropping MagSafe was the second.

The latest revelation from Edward Snowden’s trove of confidential documents shows that the CIA has long been targeting Apple, along with other major technology companies. Security analyst Rich Mogull explains why average users don’t need to worry, and why this news is actually good.

Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other Apple-related products.

Well that's understandable. Now that Apple has announced sales dates for this fitness-focused Watch, rival wearables are disappearing from its stores. Recode notes that the company is no longer selling the Nike+ FuelBand and Jawbone UP, among others, in retail stores and online.

Facetune is a fixture on the App Store’s top 20 paid apps list, currently sitting at No. 11. It has thousands of rave reviews, because it does something that a lot of people want, which is to fix insecurities. The app smooths out your skin, removes blemishes, whitens teeth, applies makeup, fills in bald spots, and generally makes you look like a Glamour Shots version of yourself.

It can seem a little silly, but the engine behind Facetune is incredibly powerful, and the app’s fans claim it rivals Photoshop for editing images. But, as its moniker suggests, Facetune is designed just to enhance photos of your face. So for its follow-up, Facetune developer Lightricks is back with what it hopes will be another big hit: Enlight for iOS, which launched today.

Software Updates via MacUpdate

MacFamilyTree 7.3.4 - Create and explore...

MacFamilyTree gives genealogy a facelift: it's modern, interactive, incredibly fast, and easy to use. We're convinced that generations of chroniclers would have loved to trade in their genealogy... Read more

Yummy FTP 1.10.2 - FTP/SFTP/FTPS client...

Yummy FTP is an FTP + SFTP + FTPS file transfer client which focuses on speed, reliability and productivity.
Whether you need to transfer a few files or a few thousand, schedule automatic backups, or... Read more

VueScan 9.5.08 - Scanner software with a...

VueScan is a scanning program that works with most high-quality flatbed and film scanners to produce scans that have excellent color fidelity and color balance. VueScan is easy to use, and has... Read more

Iridient Developer 3.0.1 - Powerful imag...

Iridient Developer (was RAW Developer) is a powerful image conversion application designed specifically for OS X. Iridient Developer gives advanced photographers total control over every aspect of... Read more

Air Video Server HD 2.1.0 - Stream video...

Air Video Server HD streams videos instantly from your computer on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple TV. No need to worry about converting or transferring files.
We took everything that was... Read more

Duplicate Annihilator 5.7.5 - Find and d...

Duplicate Annihilator takes on the time-consuming task of comparing the images in your iPhoto library using effective algorithms to make sure that no duplicate escapes.
Duplicate Annihilator... Read more

BusyContacts 1.0.2 - Fast, efficient con...

BusyContacts is a contact manager for OS X that makes creating, finding, and managing contacts faster and more efficient. It brings to contact management the same power, flexibility, and sharing... Read more

Capture One Pro 8.2.0.82 - RAW workflow...

Capture One Pro 8 is a professional RAW converter offering you ultimate image quality with accurate colors and incredible detail from more than 300 high-end cameras -- straight out of the box. It... Read more

Backblaze 4.0.0.872 - Online backup serv...

Backblaze is an online backup service designed from the ground-up for the Mac.With unlimited storage available for $5 per month, as well as a free 15-day trial, peace of mind is within reach with... Read more

Little Snitch 3.5.2 - Alerts you about o...

Little Snitch gives you control over your private outgoing data.
Track background activity As soon as your computer connects to the Internet, applications often have permission to send any... Read more

Pie In The Sky: A Pizza Odyssey 1.0
Device: iOS Universal
Category: Games
Price: $2.99, Version: 1.0 (iTunes)
Description:
A game about delivering pizza. In space.
| Read more »

Chosen Gives Hopeful Singers, Songwriter...

If YouTube videos and reality TV shows like The Voice have taught us one thing, it’s that there are a lot of people out there who are anxious to show the world their talents. And if they’ve taught us a second thing, it’s that there’s an almost... | Read more »

Android's Popular OfficeSuite Now A...

Once only available for Android devices, OfficeSuite has finally landed on the app store. The Mobile Systems app lets you view, edit, create, and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents as well as convert them to/from PDFs. It's touted as being... | Read more »

Warhammer: Arcane Magic is Coming Soon,...

Turbo Tape Games has announced that they're joining forces with Games Workshop to bring the turn-based strategy board game, Warhammer: Arcane Magic, to life on the iOS.
| Read more »

Fast & Furious: Legacy's Creati...

| Read more »

N-Fusion and 505's Ember is Totally...

| Read more »

These are All the Apple Watch Apps and G...

The Apple Watch is less than a month from hitting store shelves, and once you get your hands on it you're probably going to want some apps and games to install. Fear not! We've compiled a list of all the Apple Watch apps and games we've been able to... | Read more »

Appy to Have Known You - Lee Hamlet Look...

Being at 148Apps these past 2 years has been an awesome experience that has taught me a great deal, and working with such a great team has been a privilege. Thank you to Rob Rich, and to both Rob LeFebvre and Jeff Scott before him, for helping me... | Read more »

Hands-On With Allstar Heroes - A Promisi...

Let’s get this out of the way quickly. Allstar Heroes looks a lot like a certain other recent action RPG release, but it turns out that while it’s not yet available here, Allstar Heroes has been around for much longer than that other title. Now that... | Read more »

Macho Man and Steve Austin Join the Rank...

WWE Immortals, by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and WWE, has gotten a superstar update. You'll now have access to Macho Man Randy Savage and Steve Austin. Both characters have two different versions: Macho Man Randy Savage Renegade or Macho... | Read more »

Price Scanner via MacPrices.net

Apple offering refurbished 27-inch 5K iMacs f...

The Apple Store is offering Apple Certified Refurbished 27″ 3.5GHz 5K iMacs for $2119 including free shipping. Their price is $380 off the price of new models, and it’s the lowest price available for... Read more

16GB iPad mini on sale for $199, save $50

Walmart has 16GB iPad minis (1st generation) available for $199.99 on their online store, including free shipping. Their price is $50 off MSRP. Online orders only.
Read more

The Apple Store has Apple Certified Refurbished 13″ 2.6GHz/128GB Retina MacBook Pros available for $979 including free shipping. Original MSRP for this model was $1299.
Read more

Save up to $600 with Apple refurbished Mac Pr...

The Apple Store is offering Apple Certified Refurbished Mac Pros for up to $600 off the cost of new models. An Apple one-year warranty is included with each Mac Pro, and shipping is free. The... Read more

Samsung Galaxy S 6 and Galaxy S 6 edge U.S. P...

Samsung Electronics America, Inc. has announced the Galaxy S 6 and Galaxy S 6 edge will be available in the U.S. beginning April 10, with pre-orders being accepted now.
“We have completely reimagined... Read more

13-inch 2.5GHz MacBook Pro (refurbished) avai...

The Apple Store has Apple Certified Refurbished 13″ 2.5GHz MacBook Pros available for $829, or $270 off the cost of new models. Apple’s one-year warranty is standard, and shipping is free:
- 13″ 2.... Read more

Färbe Technik, which manufactures and markets of mobile accessories for Apple, Blackberry and Samsung mobile devices, is offering tips on how to keep your iPhone charged while in the field:
•... Read more

Jobs Board

DevOps Software Engineer - *Apple* Pay, iOS...

**Job Summary** Imagine what you could do here. At Apple , great ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring
Read more

*Apple* Retail - Multiple Positions (US) - A...

Sales Specialist - Retail Customer Service and Sales Transform Apple Store visitors into loyal Apple customers. When customers enter the store, you're also the
Read more

Sr. Technical Services Consultant, *Apple*...

**Job Summary** Apple Professional Services (APS) has an opening for a senior technical position that contributes to Apple 's efforts for strategic and transactional
Read more

Lead *Apple* Solutions Consultant - Retail...

**Job Summary** Job Summary The Lead ASC is an Apple employee who serves as the Apple business manager and influencer in a hyper-business critical Reseller's store
Read more

*Apple* Pay - Site Reliability Engineer - Ap...

**Job Summary** Imagine what you could do here. At Apple , great ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring
Read more

MacTech is a registered trademark of Xplain Corporation. Xplain, "The journal of Apple technology", Apple Expo, Explain It, MacDev, MacDev-1, THINK Reference, NetProfessional, Apple Expo, MacTech Central, MacTech Domains, MacNews, MacForge, and the MacTutorMan are trademarks or service marks of Xplain Corporation. Sprocket is a registered trademark of eSprocket Corporation. Other trademarks and copyrights appearing in this printing or software remain the property of their respective holders. Not responsible for typographical errors.

All contents are Copyright 1984-2011 by Xplain Corporation. All rights reserved. Theme designed by Icreon.